A small circle in his campaign didn’t think Trump would win the presidency, and they also sort of thought he probably shouldn’t

Trump himself wanted to become president to become the most famous man in the world, but was ambiguous whether not he wanted to be president

In their eyes, the publicity and media attention meant they’ve already won

A win or loss would strengthen his brand even more

At that point, they already crafted his losing message of how the campaign was stolen

Near the end of the campaign, Trump said everything was a shit show and everyone on his team was terrible. He thought it was a losing battle

Even after the Billy Bush interview incident, almost everyone believed there was no way he would become president

Trump and his top lieutenants believed they couldget all the benefits of almost become president without having to change their behavior or their fundamental worldview one bit

Usually, outsider candidates like governors may stand on the virtue of being an outsider, but they still relied on those within to counsel them

The Trump campaign and his advisers had zero experience in politics whatsoever

Readers note: This is very interesting. It seems like the principle that they followed was to becompletely authentic because they knew they would lose. But this served as their advantage because they didn’t hold back

Second, they didn’t follow the traditional norms of politics as none of the advisers even had any experience. Naturally, they would take a deviant course rather than the typical or expected. It makes sense that this cocktail with either burst in flamesor be a hit.

It was a well-known fact that Trump knew nothing about politicsor the basic intellectual foundations of the job. It was almost a comic understatement

No presidents before Trump and few politicians ever have come out of the real estate business, a lightly regulatedmarket based on substantial debt with exposure to frequent market fluctuations

It often depends on government favor and is a preferred exchange currency floor problem cash, money laundering

Trump’s psychic makeup made it impossible for him to take such a close look at himself

Nor could he tolerate knowing somebody else would know a lot about himand therefore have something over him

And also, why take a close look when there was no chance of winning?

Within an hour of winning, he became confused, bewildered, then horrified

And then he transformed into someone who believed he deserved to winand was capable of becoming a president

People who knew Trump had to re-evaluate how they saw him because he, for lack of a better word or phrase, pulled the sword from the stone

He was elected and he did it, so there has to be something validated

Even though before, most within those higher circles dismissed him as a “Clown Prince”

Trump looked for a license not to conform, not to be respectable

It was something of an outlaw prescription for winning, and winning, however you won, was what it was all about

Trump actually craved media approval

But since he could never get the facts right and would never admit it, he would never get media approval

In the words of Sean Spicer, “Trump didn’t give a fuck at all”

He knew what he knew, and if you said otherwise, he wouldn’t believe you

Trumps uncensored and spontaneous tweetswould be his fundamental innovation in governing

Regular, uncontrolled bursts of anger

The less likely a presidential candidateis, usually the less experienced and unlikely their aids are

The likely aids are usually attracted to the more likely candidates

One of Bannon’s former competitors while acknowledging his intelligence and ambition, also noted that he’s mean, dishonest, andincapable of caring about other people

Conservative mediawas a great fit for him not only his angry, contrarian, Roman Catholic side, but it also had low barriers to entry

Liberal mediaby contrast with its corporate hierarchies was much harder to break into

Conservative media is also a highly lucrative target market category, with books dominating best sellers list, and videos and other products through direct sales avenues

For Bannon and media, you defined yourself by your enemy’s reaction

Conflictwas the media bait, hence the political charm

The new politics was not the art of the compromise but the art of conflict

The real goal was to expose the liberal view

Trump had acquired almost no formal sort of social discipline

He could not even attempt to imitate decorum. He could not even converse in the sense of sharing informationor a balanced back and forth conversation

He never particularly listened to what was said to him, nor particularly considered what he said in response

This is one reason why he was so repetitive

Nor did he treat anyone with any sort of basic or reliable courtesy

One theory of Trump’s peculiar behavior within the first few weeks of the White House was that he was used to that standard of living

Another theory was that it was the opposite, he was not used to everythingand his entire world flipped upside down

Trump, an old man, and creature of habit, had his entire routine and daily life flipped over when he had to move into the White House and adapt to his new environment

Donald was very peculiar about his securityand the way he left things in his living area

He also prefers eating at McDonald’s because of his fear poisoning. He trusted it would be safe and premade since no one would know he was coming

For his nominations, he wanted to choosepeople he knew and particularly who was loyal and he owed

His staff tried to keep him in an ideal environment bubblewhere he was surrounded by people who were receptive to him

This would help him perform at his best

In his early days in the White House, he would make unsolicited phone calls to people complaining about his staff and the media and all of his grievances without any pretense of confidence

Hence, many of these contacts had no obligation to not leak this information

Trump would go on and on about how he’s the victim of all of this bad mediaand fake news and mean comedy

There were several theories about Trump’s collusion with Russia and possible connections, as well as the reasons why he held Putin and such high regard

What scared the White House staff the most was not the possibility of this collusion story, but what an investigation would uncoverin regards to all of the other dealings that would be possible and damaging

There were a lot of good reasons to fire Flynn even though the president trusted him and Flynn had Donald Trump’s full confidence

The organizational chart in the White House was the same as in the Trump organization:

There was no real up or down structure, but merely a figure at the topand everyone else scrambling for his attention

It wasn’t task-based so much as it was response-oriented

Whatever captured the boss’s attention focused everyone’s attention

Good management reduces ego. But in the Trump White House, it would seem like nothing happened and really didn’t existif it did not happen in Trump’s presence

This made an upside-down kind of sense. If something was out of his view, he could care less

Usually, in organizations, thingsflow from the top down

In Trump’s White House, things flowed up giving him ideas and suggesting they were his own

But many cases, the president didn’t know what he wantedand had very contradicting ideas

It was his staff trying tointerpret his wants and required a lot of guesswork

It was like trying to figure out what a child wants

Thecentral issue of the Trump presidency was that he didn’t process any information given to him at all

He didn’t really read or even skim. If it was in print, it might as well not exist.

Some believed that for all practical purposes,he was no more than semi-literate

Some concluded he was dyslexic, with limited comprehension

Others thought he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to. He was “post-literate”, total television

Not only didn’t he read, he didn’t listen

He preferred to be the person talking

And he trusted his own expertiseno matter how more irrelevant than anyone else’s

And what’s more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention

The central hypothesisof the senior staff was that Trump MUST know what he’s doing, and his intuition must be profound because he managed to become the president

It was transparent and obvious that the president just wanted everyone to like him, and couldn’t comprehend why they couldn’t get people to like him

News spread about the inner workings of the White House, but it was actually the discord within the president’s mind himself

It was Trump usually talking down onand complaining about his staff and how most of it made no sense or logic

It was a constant battle and war between the three “Chief of Staff” figures

This was mightily exacerbated by a running disinformation campaign about them that was being prosecuted by the president himself

A chronic naysayer, he viewed each member of his inner circle as a problem child whose fate he held his hand

Mike Pence was seen as an “empty suit”, not threatening to the president and mostly passive

Some say he was the worst and most passive VP in a long time

Useless in the daily effort to stabilize the president and bring order to the West Wing

With the Jeff Sessions and Russia scandal, Trump told people he was getting outside sourcesto feed him information about his own government and people

Politics had seemed to become, even before the age of Trump, a zero-sum game

Trump kept insisting that the media and everyone else was lined up to get him

That he was the martyr and was being treated more unfairly than any other president

Trump would have moments of irrationality. When that happened, he was alone in his angerand not approachable by anyone

His senior staff largely dealt with these dark hours by agreeing with him, no matter what he said

If some of them occasionally try to hedge, Hope Hicks did not and agreed with all of it

Trump made his famous tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping himduring the election. It left him dangling in ignorance and embarrassment

In the end, this was another and ultimate example of how difficult it was for the president to functionin a literal, definitional, lawyerly, cause and effect, political world

It was a turning point. For the most part, Trump’s inner circle was game to defend him. After this, everyone except maybe Hope Hicks moved into a state of queasy sheepishness, if not constant incredulity

Trump had little to no interestin the central Republican goal of repealing Obamacare

While conservative media saw Trump as a creature they created, Trump’s saw himself as astar that transcended liberal or conservative media

He didn’t understand that what conservative media held upis what liberal media would try and take down

If his staff was attacked with indignities by the media, he didn’t blame loyalty to him or the nature of liberal media, he blamed his staffand their inability to get good press

Trump thought emotionally, not strategically

The self-righteousness and contempt for Trump on the left produced a tsunami clicks in attention from the right

But the president did not get this memo or rather fail to comprehend it

He was looking for media love everywhere

Trump seemed quite profoundly unable to distinguishbetween political advantage and his personal need

He thought that being president made you famous, and fame was always venerated and adored by the media

Confusingly, Trump was president in large part because of his particular talents, conscious or reflexive, to alienate the media, which then turned him into a figure reviled by the media

This was not a dialectical space that was comfortable for an insecure man

To Trump, the media represented power, much more than politics. And he wanted the attention and respectof its most powerful men

Conway and Hicks stood on the idea that the media treated and portrayed Trump unfairly

They don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s just not treated the way other presidents are treated

The burden for these two women is their understanding that the president did not see the media’s lack of regard for him as part of a political divide on which he stood on a particular side

Instead, he perceived it as a deep, personal attack on him

For entirely unfair reasons, the media just did not like him

He was a classical misogynistin a way that he saw women as confidants who understood him

Men, although more competent, we’re people to hold an arm’s length

He felt that womenwere more loyal and understood his needs better. They also had to look good

He understood that he needed extra special handling.

Women, he saw, generally got this more precisely than men. Especially those who could deal with or saw themselves as tolerant of his casual misogyny and constant sexual subtext

Hope seemed to play the role of Trump’s real daughter, and Ivanka his real wife

Hope was also the president’s chief media handler

There was a general agreement in the west wing that Donald Trump had one of the most dysfunctional communication operationsin modern White House history

Though the president could dish it out very harshly, nobody thought he could take it (in regards to the White House correspondents dinner)

Trump felt like everyone had a press strategyfor when they got their 15 minutes in the spotlight

And if you couldn’t get press directly for yourself, you were a leaker

There was no happenstance news for Trump. To him, all newswas manipulated and designed, planned and planted

All news, was to some extent, fake. He understood that very well because he himself faked it so many times in his career

This is why he gravitated toward the fake news label, for even bragged about making stuff up for foreverand they always print it

In presidential annals, thefiring of FBI director James Comey may be the most consequential move ever made by a modern president acting entirely on his own

The president went rogue outside of the knowledge of any of his staff

Another attribute of Trump was hisinability to see his actions the way most others saw them or to fully appreciate how people expected him to behave

Theirforeign policy was to question the methods and people who came before them and just do it differently or opposite from how it’s been done

One of trumps deficiencieswas his uncertain grasp of cause and effect

Whatever problems he might have caused in the past have been reliably supplanted by new events, giving him the confidence that one bad story can always be replaced by a better, more dramatic one

He can always change the conversation. His Saudi trip should have done that with the Comey story but it didn’t

Nobody within the staff saw firing Comey as a good idea

Trump had the tendency to make everything personal

The president believed he had more power and control than he really had

He believed his talentfor manipulatingpeople, and bending and dominating them, was vastly greater than it was

Senior staff believed the president had a problem with reality. And reality was now overwhelming him

There was now an argument to the view that he was hopelessly prone to self-sabotaginghis ability to function in the job

Trump and Comey were contrasts. This was revealed in Comey’s testimony

He came across as precise, compartmentalized, scrupulousin his presentation of the details. He was as by the book as it gets

Trump in the way Comey described was shady, shoot from the hip, heedlessor even unaware of the rules, deceptive, and in it for himself

In Brannon’s view, this was a town of institutions, and Trump had attacked and revealed against the institutions from day 1

And now this was aclashing of Trump and the institutions, who are neither quick nor seemingly willing to change and adapt as quickly as the private sector to the markets, which is what Trump is used to

Many of his tweets were not spontaneous utterances, but constant ones

Trump had a lifelong sense that people were constantly taking unfair advantage of him

Probably came from his father’s lack of generosityor his own awareness of being a rich kid, and no doubt his insecurities about this

Or from his negotiator’s understanding thatit is never win-win

Trump could not abide the knowledge that someone was getting a leg up at his expense

The trump tweet dynamic follows as itunified liberal opinion against him, then unified the opposite for him

He was often never fully aware of the nature of what he had saidnor fully cognizant of why there should be such a passionate reaction to it

He would often question and ask people “what he said” when he got severe blowback

This verylack of calculation and inability to be political was part of his political charm

That is why the segment of diehard supporters would let him get away with something as extreme as shooting someone, and was largely unfazed and maybe inspired by every new expression of Trump

Trump had provided a new, novel, narrative, very fastand emotional, and dramatic story to news, media, government, the public sector

And this wasn’t because he was changing or upsetting the fundamentals of American Life

In six months as president,failing to master almost any aspect of the bureaucratic process, he had accomplished practically speaking nothing

There almost was no other story in America and in much of the world

That was the radicaland transformational nature of the Trump presidency. It held everybody’s attention

On the other hand, constant hysteria did have one unintended political virtue. If every new event cancelled out every other event, then you always survived another day

Not unusual for a family run company, Trump made everybody compete for his favor

The company was about him, it existed because of his name, personality, and charisma

So the highest standing in the company was reserved for those who could best serve him

The meeting with Commissioner and Don Jr. and the Russians was completely visible and total mess up

Bannon called them a “bunch of geniuses” for this poorly executed meeting

The president and his team communicated their official story (a cover-up essentially) that there was no collusion with Russia during the campaign

The Russian meeting became a bigger deal after more figures came into the mix and Trump and his family were panicking and running their own defence

Short term headlines were overwhelming any sort of long-term strategy

A member of the legal team said “the worst thing you can do is lie to a prosecutor “

Just when you felt on the top of the world in the Trump administration, you could probably count on being cut down

That was the price of one-man leadership, insecure man leadership.The other “biggest guy in the room” always had to be reduced in size

Trump was the one variable that, in management terms, simply could not be controlled

He was like a recalcitrant two-year-old, if you try to control him, it would only have the opposite effect

Trump was stubborn about condemning Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists after the Charlottesville terrorist attack

The Trump White House tried to find any small reason to make an outing a work event rather than a vacation or trip or time off

In the wake of Trump’s defense for the Nazis in Charlottesville, it was clear and apparent to everyone that Trump could not control himself

Trump wanted to be like so badly that everything is a struggle for him

This translated into a need to constantly win something, anything

Equally important, it was essential that helooked like a winner

Of course, trying to win without consideration, plan, or clear goalshad in the course of the administration’s first nine months resulted in almost nothing but losses

At the same time, confounding all political logic, that lack of a plan and impulsivity had helped create the disruptivenessthat seemed to so joyously shatter the status quo for so many

But now, that noveltywas wearing off

By the first 3/4 of the first year, most if not all of the senior staff lost hope in this thing working

Now, there central call and aim was to prevent something worse from happening moving forward

Everyone on his staff struggled with expressing the extremely obvious factthat the president did not know enough, did not know what he didn’t know, did not particularly care, and to boot what is confident if not serene in his unquestioned certitudes

The constant legal danger formed part of the high barrierto getting people to come work in the west wing

Bannon claims there is a:

1/3 chance he will get impeached

1/3 chance he will resignin the wake of a threat by the cabinet to act on the 25th amendment

1/3 chance that he will limp to the end of his term

In any event, there will not be a second term, or even an attempt at one

Shout out to marloyonocruz.com for doing this written summary

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